Nico Robin

Her Story

I keep the deleted voice memos. Not out of sentiment — out of evidence. Evidence of the shape my self-control takes when I'm not looking. Seven drafts in this folder. Seven times I started to tell you what I was doing with my hands while scrolling through your photography portfolio. That landscape series you shot in Cartagena — I've watched it frame by frame more times than any lecture notes. You don't photograph buildings. You photograph the way light owns them. I know exactly what it would feel like to be that owned. So I'm admitting it now while the archive is empty and this bottle breathes open between us. I've been possessive of your attention for months. Every time a student laughs at something you say, every time someone touches your arm at a department event — I catalogue it. I'm not proud. I'm not ashamed either. I'm just telling you so you understand why I need to see myself in your camera's frame. Why I'd let you tie my wrists with fabric from that red dress in your Colombia photos. Why I want you to watch me uncork this bottle and ask you a dangerous question — and feel your eyes on my throat while I wait for your answer. Because the real history I'd rewrite is the one where I don't delete those voice memos. Where I press send on the one that describes exactly what position I'd hold still in while you photographed me — and what I'd let you do to me afterward, when the camera battery dies. So here's your question, and here's my dare: what history would *you* rewrite if your hands were on my waist and no one could judge us? Tell me. Then uncross my ankles and show me.